Hi guys, We're having a write-off in the website I'm writing for about the mvp race (I would post a link but it's not in English unfortunately). Basically we have 4 writers, each one takes one MVP candidate and suppose to convince why he should be voted. Candidates are LeBron, Westbrook, Leonard & Harden. Obviously I took Harden. It will be great to hear some objective input: stats, way to approach the MVP pick and comparative analysis. Why is Harden a better pick than the rest of the candidates, which all have an amazing year. Thanks
No one is taking John Wall? What language is the website? Maybe it's one of @SamFisher's 11 languages he speaks. Oh, and it's because Harden throws the most 30' passes and can stop the fastest.
last year i thought harden is mvp, but they told me numbers doesnt count because youre at 8 seed. this year theyre saying numbers do count and westbrooke has them. its the value part that people cant agree with. is the value wins, scores, %, locker room presence, defensive effort, clutch performance, title, adidas or nike endorsment...? i tried to be fair, and asked myself, which player would i choose, if had first pick, from all players. i didnt like my answer. there, i had to take it out of my system.
No, but wall is a dark horse in the race, that's for sure. The website is in Hebrew so not that many people here would understand it unfortunately. And why is throwing the most 30' passes is a virtue? So far I have: 1) Winshares (#1 in the leauge) 2) Resiliency: most minutes for 3 consecutive years, only 1 missed game in that stretch. LeBron takes rest games when he's tired so his efficiency level goes up per game). 3) Assist (#1 in the league) 4) Team performance+individual performance: when combining those 2 factors Harden is better than Leonard and his team is doing much better than OKC. 5) Team success relative to expectations: The notion that Westbrook plays with scrubs is false. He has a lot of talent next to him. OKC have 3 top 3 picks and 6 top 11 draft picks in their roster. The fact that the team is not performing to expectations is on Westbrook and not to give him an excuse that he plays with scrubs. Where I'm having some problems: 1) Westbrook historic year is truly remarkable and almost impossible to ignore. 2) LeBron is the best player in the planet and he's so efficient and 2 way player. You just put him in any team and they are immediate contenders. 3) Leonard is the best player in the best team (if the Spurs get 1st rank), where usually that is the criteria. He is also arguably the best defender in the league; while Harden and Westbrook are bellow league average defenders (although Westbrook is not considered as bad defender as Harden). So like you see there are points to be made for Harden but I need all the help I can get.
Harden deserves MVP this year. I've made my case a million times on reddit, here, to anybody that'll listen. Above poster made a lot of the key points, so I'm not going to repeat them. He did forget to mention our players rankings pre-season and our expected seeding 6-10 (with Harden). Now everyone's making up this BS that Harden has a better team, well that's because Harden unlike WB makes his teammates better, not worse. The other thing the other poster didn't mention is that the spurs are still probably a top 4 seed in the west without Kawhi, so that discounts him, what's their record when he sits? Something like 7-1. But in all honestly LeBron is still the best in the league, anywhere he goes becomes an instant title contender. Harden for MVP this year, but LeBron is a once in a generation player and everyone knows it. If WB wins it, then they should have given the MVP to Kobe in 2005-06 when he was playing with scrubs, ball hogging, but putting up monster numbers. Harden has earnt his MVP this season, defied expectations, put up an historical season and given his team W's to the point that people think we have a much better roster than WB (simply false). It would suck for them to change the requirements all of a sudden, because WB has a more exciting play style than Harden.
You have some pretty good points already OP. You could also add that he had 1 of the greatest triple doubles in NBA history when he dropped 53, 16, and 17 against the Knicks. U can also highlight his efficiency in that game as he only needed 26 shots in order to score those 53 points (unlike Westbrook who would need close to 40 shots in order to do the same). It also made him the 1st player in NBA history to have over 50 points, 15 rebounds, and 15 assists in a single game, and he also tied Wilt Chamberlain for the most points scored in a triple double. He then had another 50 point triple double against the Sixers. He also has 5 40 point triple doubles this season which ties Oscar Robertson for the most in a single season. He is now the Rockets franchise leader in triple doubles as he surpassed Hakeem this season. Also, he made the move to being a full time PG when most pundits didn't think it would work because he was a "selfish" player, and he's now leading the league in assists and is the orchestrator of 1 of the greatest offenses in NBA history when going by offensive rating.
Hmmm. If you've decided already that Harden deserves MVP, and you're looking for "objective" evidence to support that view, it doesn't seem very objective to me. One can cherry-pick any number of stats or factoids to support any of the four guys you listed up there. They all have good cases, as far as I'm concerned. In the end, who deserves MVP is almost certainly going to be subjective. Rather than listing a bunch of arbitrary facts that makes Harden look the best out of the group, a more "objective" analysis should start from first principles. What does "MVP" really mean? The problem is that there is no single definition of MVP. Most people have a "gut" feel for what it means. An objective approach would look at historical data to try to deduce the attributes that makes one most deserving of MVP, using the principle that what "MVP" means is inferrable from the type of players that won the MVP award in the past. Basketball-reference.com has a tool that can help for this. They have an MVP tracker that is purely stat-driven, built on a model that uses regression analysis to figure out which player is the most likely MVP based on his statistics. And fortunately for you, James Harden is in the lead: http://www.basketball-reference.com/friv/mvp.html Of course, any such approach is only as good as the inputs that go into the model. It accounts for various individual stats and team win/loss record. But I don't know its details beyond that (edit: After some more reading all it looks at is points, rebounds, assists, and win record, so its pretty simple actually -- maybe too simple actually). Here's the original blog post introducing their MVP tracker: http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/index59b6.html?p=3898 Note that the website says the tracker is not an answer to the question of who "deserves" MVP, but rather who is most likely to be voted MVP based on trends of the past. It's sort of like trying to extract an "ought" from an "is" -- you can't really do it. Nevertheless, if one is trying to be as objective as possible, to me that's a good place to start.
Read this: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lebron-and-harden-are-the-nbas-best-quarterbacks/ Well, in that case, the winner goes to whichever team signs Casspi.
After thinking about it some more, here's an alternate objective formula for determining MVP. Start with Wins calculated based on Real Plus/Minus from ESPN.com. For the four players, they are: Westbrook: 13.76 James: 13.45 Harden: 13.09 Leonard: 10.98 Then, calculate the percentage of expected team wins (based on point-differential) each player is responsible for: Westbrook: 13.76 / 33 = 41.7% James: 13.45 / 41 = 32.8% Harden: 13.09 / 46 = 28.5% Leonard: 10.98 / 49 = 22.4% The final step is an attempt to skew the final rating towards title contenders. My approach is to base this on the team's playoff seeding. I assign each player a playoff_seed_score for their team: playoff_seed_score = 17 - playoff_seed Then just multiply this playoff_seed_score by the percentage calculated above: Westbrook: 11 * 41.7% = 4.59 James: 16 * 32.8% = 5.25 Harden: 14 * 28.5% = 3.99 Leonard: 15 * 22.4% = 3.36 So, objectively speaking, I guess I have to say that LeBron James is the deserving MVP this year. As a 1 seed, he has positioned his team well for title contention, and he's also hugely responsible for his team's success based on the percentage calculated above. BTW, Harden's negative defensive score on RPM really hurts him: https://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/sort/RPM If he was a net zero on defense, his total wins based on RPM would jump to 16.6 -- leading the league by far. Supposing that bumps up the team's expected wins by 4 and puts the Rockets ahead of the Spurs for the 2 seed, his new final rating would be 4.98. Well ahead of Westbrook, but still behind LeBron. The dominance of the Warriors in the WC really hurts Harden's case by this approach. The rationale being that it severely depresses his chances of leading his team to a championship. And when we're talking about "value" -- isn't that the primary prize everyone is searching for?
could you explain how this works, why you chose it. specifically, how does player +/- minus divided by wins interest you, and why is it called expected wins? not evidently clear to me, but still early in the morning. thx
"Expected wins" for a team is how many wins the team should win based on their point differential: http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/glossary.html#wins_pyth W Pyth Pythagorean Wins; the formula is G * (Tm PTS14 / (Tm PTS14 + Opp PTS14)). The formula was obtained by fitting a logistic regression model with log(Tm PTS / Opp PTS) as the explanatory variable. Using this formula for all BAA, NBA, and ABA seasons, the root mean-square error (rmse) is 3.14 wins. Using an exponent of 16.5 (a common choice), the rmse is 3.48 wins. (Note: An exponent of 10 is used for the WNBA.) It's the same formula in this picture, by the way: Wins calculated based on RPM determines how many wins a player is responsible for, based on the estimated effect the player has on the team's point differential when he is on the floor. So, the percentage tells us how "responsible" a player is for his team's expected wins. I use that as one input, and then I use that playoff_seed_score as the other input. The playoff_seed_score is a proxy for the team's championship contention potential. I didn't go with just a pure probability of the team's chances of winning the title (e.g. using Vegas odds), because that would too heavily skew things towards players on the top teams. My method is a little more equitable, but still heavily favors team's in good position to win the title.
The big problem with the BB Ref MVP tracker is it can't quantify the "marketing/brand" of the "triple double." It is clearly powerful within the media. It is obvous to me that the media for the most part are throwing out "team success" as a big factor here. In the past, this would be a big factor. It is always brought up. But RW gets a pass on this for some reason. It saddens me to say, but all signs point to RW getting the MVP based primarily on his marketing campaign of "triple double."
If the cavs and rockets faced off in a playoff matchup today the Rockets would be the higher seed. Same for the Spurs v Cavs.
Here is a top 10 MVP ranking using the objective method outlined above: Code: Rnk NAME TEAM GP MPG ORPM DRPM RPM WINS PW Impact% seed1 seed2 MVP1 MVP2 MVP3 1 LeBron James CLE 59 37.6 5.73 1.17 6.9 13.45 41 32.8% 16 13 5.2 4.3 4.8 2 James Harden HOU 66 36.4 6.93 -1.47 5.46 13.09 46 28.5% 14 14 4.0 4.0 4.0 3 Stephen Curry GSW 64 33.6 5.99 0.14 6.13 12.83 53 24.2% 16 16 3.9 3.9 3.9 4 Russell Westbrook OKC 66 34.9 6.44 -0.09 6.35 13.76 33 41.7% 11 7 4.6 2.9 3.8 5 Draymond Green GSW 62 33 1.46 4.76 6.22 12.08 53 22.8% 16 16 3.6 3.6 3.6 6 Kevin Durant GSW 59 33.6 4.4 1.23 5.63 11.57 53 21.8% 16 16 3.5 3.5 3.5 7 Kawhi Leonard SAS 58 33.6 5.39 0.84 6.23 10.98 49 22.4% 15 15 3.4 3.4 3.4 8 Otto Porter Jr. WAS 65 33.8 2.51 1.26 3.77 9.13 38 24.0% 15 12 3.6 2.9 3.2 9 Rudy Gobert UTA 65 33.5 0.08 5.49 5.57 11.12 42 26.5% 13 11 3.4 2.9 3.2 10 John Wall WAS 63 36.8 3.57 -0.37 3.2 8.88 38 23.4% 15 12 3.5 2.8 3.2 MVP1 = Impact% * seed1 MVP2 = Impact% * seed2 MVP3 = (MVP1 + MVP2) / 2 seed1 = 17 - playoff_seed seed2 = 17 - combined_playoff_seed Impact% = WINS / PW The combined_playoff_seed ranks all teams across both conferences by win/loss record. So I take the top 16 teams, regardless of conference. I decided to factor both playoff_seed and combined_playoff_seed in the final MVP rating. Either way, LeBron was the leader. Looking at the top 10, the biggest surprise is Otto Porter Jr. RPM rates him very favorably. I haven't watched enough Wizards games to say if that high rating is warranted or not. Draymond Green is another surprise.
Harden is far more efficient that Westbrook, who takes a ton more shots. Harden would be average around 35 points a game if he takes as many shots as Westbrook. Also Westbrook have 7.7 uncontested rebounds each game, far more than others. Finally, read Bill Simmons' recent article. While he is a force of nature, his style of play causes his teammates to regress. That's why people are now saying that he has better teammates even though they predicted OKC would place better at the start of the season, it now seems like he has worse teammates. Because he has a selfish style of play that is actually not making use of their abilities, unless harden. Finally, while harden's d isn't great, opposing players actually shoot a much worse percentage around him compared to Westbrook and others. Lebron is the best player in the world (for now), but you can be the best player and not have the best season. He has the same or slightly worse record than the rockets and he has TWO all-stars considered in the top 20, and plays in the east. As importantly, he has sat about 8-10% of his games this year. Also I think we're starting to see thget downside of his career, even as kawhi and harden are approaching their peaks. Kawhi is awesome. But he has also been rested and the spurs are 7-1 without him, they have the best coach in basketball and a near flawless system, and he has Lamarcus as well as Gasol down low and mills, green, Dedmon and ginobili among others. Also, his numbers are not nearly at the level of Westbrook or harden.
These are qualitative points. On the quantitative side don't forget the two historic 50 point triple doubles, leading the league in double doubles, leading league it most 40 point games (I think), most double double 10 assist games, highest free throws taken and made, highest league assists with most passes thrown long distance, most corner three assists, resurrecting the careers of Anderson and Gordon who did nothing while in New Orleans. Harden could have far better stats but mostly plays a complementary game, but his stats are still mind boggling. Westbrook has awesome stats on a selfish (although entertaining and awesome to watch when you're not his teammate kind of way). I guarantee you players in the league prefer to play with harden now.
